You clicked on this blog, so I can hazard a guess about a few things.
Are you eagerly sending out marketing emails but not getting much engagement in return? Do your emails head out into the big wide world, only to not make a sound, like the hypothetical tree in the woods?
Well you’re in luck because I’m going to discuss a few things that might be going wrong, and how you can put them right.
Long story short, in order to send a great marketing email, you need to remember the mental processes that go into receiving a marketing email.
This process is very sequential, like a hurdling race. You have to act as coach to encourage your audience over all of the hurdles and towards success at the finish line. So, welcome to today’s analogy, I suppose!
We’ll assume you’ve already got an offer that is highly relevant to your audience and you are looking to promote it with promotional emails that’ll go out to your email subscribers. That’s where our race begins.
The Email Hurdles Race: A Method of Crafting Engaging Marketing Emails
When you’re creating a marketing email, you see that email in your MailerLite or MailChimp web app and you’re able to gauge it as a whole, in all of its glory. But how your audience receives that email is a very different experience.
Think about the last time you opened a marketing email from an external party. In a split second, you’d reviewed the sender and subject line, and made a judgement call as to whether to click through. You may have even read the email, clicked through, and engaged with that brand further as a result. You actually embarked upon part of the journey we’re going to be examining today.
Each step in that journey requires effort, just like jumping a hurdle. And the more mental effort is expended through clearing each hurdle leaves less mental effort available for clearing future hurdles. You need to make the journey as easy and understandable as possible.
Also during our hypothetical hurdles race, people can drop out at any moment. For example, they may clear hurdle 1, but stumble at 2, and end up not finishing. However, when an email is well-crafted, there is a certain momentum that carries the reader along – just like a hurdler at the top of their game.
So, starter pistols ready, let’s get on with the race.
Hurdle 1: Your Subject Line
Naturally, your email’s subject line needs to grab attention and stir interest. Remember, it’s not being viewed in a vacuum – it’s rubbing shoulders with other emails, all vying for attention. Some will be fellow promotional emails, some will be more pressing emails that have come directly from clients, suppliers, and contacts.
Your subject line’s job here is to seize the reader’s attention and get them wanting to hear more – just enough to open the email.
However, don’t fall into the trap of putting something salacious in the subject line just to earn that click through. The subject line needs to be semantically relevant to the problem they’re facing or the offer you’re offering, else people will immediately click away when they know they’ve been duped.
Depending on the data you have about your subscribers, you might be able to personalise the subject line to make it stand out. Our brains light up when we hear our own names, but it has to feel natural and genuine. Try using the recipient’s name in the subject line and test how well your subscribers react.
Don’t forget that people will also be looking at the sender name in the “From” field too. You might want to test using your company name versus a human sender’s name. As someone who sits at the helm of one very personal brand (alright then, two) I’m a big fan of using my own name in From field on promotional emails, but your mileage might vary.
And once they’ve done that, that’s hurdle number one done. Just 2 (or so) more to go.
How do I know people have jumped this hurdle?
Check your opens/open rates.
Hurdle 2: Your Email’s Content
So you’ve piqued your reader’s interest enough for them to click through and view the contents of the email. Now what are you going to do with that interest?
Actually writing promotional emails is a whole art form unto itself. You need to keep your offer in mind at every step, communicating its benefits clearly and persuasively.
I encourage you to follow the following elements of promotional email best practice:
- Use personalisation to refer to the subscriber by name and use any (consensually shared) information you have about them. Play into that brain activation!
- Don’t confuse matters. Isolate a single service, product, or benefit and focus on that for the duration of the email. Laying out your entire menu can create confusion and cause decision paralysis.
- Acknowledge the problems they face, speak about how you help them overcome those issues, and use words that customers like them use to describe what you do and why you’re great.
- Use a copywriting formula like AIDA or BAB to put together the building blocks of what you say, how, and when.
Getting this right for you, your business, and your customer base is going to take some trial and error. So try out a few different things – get to know what your subscribers like and respond to. Yes, it will mean some emails will be flops, but nothing is really a flop if you can learn from it.
How do I know people have jumped this hurdle?
Unfortunately, metrics-wise, this one is a bit of an invisible hurdle. Though most email marketing solutions will tell you how many subscribers opened your email and clicked the links within, unfortunately they don’t tell you how long a reader has spent reading an email. Granted, this might be to respect the reader’s privacy, but if not then they might be missing a trick there.
Whatever the reason, this sadly means that people might be leaping this hurdle – i.e., spending time reading and ingesting your email’s contents – and you have no way of knowing whether they disinterestedly clicked away or hung on every word. C’est la marketing vie.
Hurdle 3: Clicking Through to Your Offer
After opening your email and (hopefully) voraciously hoovering up its contents, your subscriber is teetering on the precipice of becoming a relatively qualified prospect. So how can we make that click through to your website (or wherever) happen?
This is where using copywriting formulae come in particularly handy. They are really useful for setting the scene and building narrative momentum towards a crescendo of agreement and action.
Also consider whether your offer is limited in any way. Is it a limited time offer? Are you only able to offer a certain number of “seats”? Don’t be shy about communicating this as it may create a certain sense of urgency. And an extra word of advice here – if the offer isn’t limited, don’t pretend that it is just to instil a touch of FOMO!
Now let’s talk about the actual link that you want your reader to click on. This URL chosen needs to be the most direct and straightforward page to allow the reader to accept and act on your offer. This might be a landing page specifically for the offer you’ve created, the most relevant service page on your website, a discovery call booking link – whatever the most practical next step is.
Don’t simply forward them to your home page or a contact page as there are too many options there and they might get distracted or lost. Neither should you end on a limp, directionless “get in touch” encouraging them to email you as that puts another hurdle in their path: they’ve got a whole email to think up and compose before you can get the ball rolling. And the more hurdles you put in their path, the higher the chances of them dropping out.
When it comes to creating your email’s actual call to action, I always advise making it quite visual. Use a button or a graphic to draw the eye and make the actual “click point” unmissable.
In terms of call to action wording, consider these three pointers:
- Set Accurate Expectations – Be clear about what the reader can accomplish on the next screen, e.g., “Sign up here to get the guide!”
- Shift Perspective – Use “I, me, my” wording to frame the offer towards what the reader stands to receive, e.g., “Claim my free scan.”
- Pick One Action – Don’t give the reader multiple options unless you really have to. The aim is to single-pointedly focus them towards a single action.
But as with all of the points above, I can only tell you the best practices. You need to test out different call to action strategies to see what your audience appreciates most.
How do I know people have jumped this hurdle?
Check your clicks and click through rates. Your click-to-open rate can also be useful.
Hurdle 4: And Beyond?
I hope this guide has helped you better envisage some of the psychology that makes marketing emails successful and that it has given you some helpful, practical tips for creating cracking emails in future.
Yet we need to remember that this is only part of an even larger process. Before you can embark on this process, you need to have earned those subscribers in the first place – that’s a process all its own.
And following this process, when people have clicked through, you need to keep those individuals impressed enough through your landing page and beyond in order to earn them as a client.
In Conclusion
Creating your own blend of email marketing perfection takes ongoing testing and measurement. But there is an important element here that shouldn’t be overlooked: an introspective approach to learning lessons from the data.
Open rates and click through rates are nice and all, but what do the non-openers tell us? Are people happily reaching a certain point and then their engagement drops off a cliff? That might indicate a weak, less impressive part of your wider buyer process.
After all, a buyer isn’t judging each interaction with you in a vacuum – they’re building a mental timeline of engagement with you that will ultimately colour their decision to work with you or not. I encourage you to zoom out and look at this big picture where you can.
Are you a B2B tech provider who needs a helping hand with email marketing, blogging, copywriting, or content strategy?
Drop me a line here and I’ll get back to you asap!
